The building on Seventy-third Street was indistinguishable from the dozen others it was connected to on the long block, save for the fire escape that was affixed to the front of the structure instead of the rear and its arched entrance that reminded me of the stained-glass windows at Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Gothic towers of the Brooklyn Bridge.

His neighborhood church, Our Lady of Guadalupe, which I visited for the first time after months of seeing happy people leaving it as I walked home from school, was as constant a presence and as sturdy as my grandma, and was a haven from the confusing, turbulent, and sometimes harsh world I lived in.